Q&A: Stephen Dorff on old Levi’s, Elle Fanning, and Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere

Date December 22, 2010

Stephen Dorff, showered and everything, at the New York screening of Somewhere. Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images

There’s a whole generation of girls that knows Stephen Dorff best, or perhaps only, from his transformative role as…the guy who rescued Britney Spears from a bathtub in “Everytime.” With Somewhere, the latest tender, plotless, irresistible film by Sofia Coppola (in theatres January 7), that should change. The love story of an adolescent father (pill-popping, bed-hopping movie star Johnny Marco) and his preternaturally wise girl-child (played by Elle Fanning), Somewhere is less Stephen Dorff’s comeback than his redemption. It’s a makeover in which he looks a lot like himself: the wild, damaged wonderboy every unreasonable woman wants to fix.

On a Monday morning at Toronto’s Hazelton Hotel, Dorff sat down to a breakfast of sliced fruit, a Diet Coke, and Camel Lights. He wore old jeans and a T-shirt, like in the film, and didn’t seem particularly showered. “I feel like hell,” he growled; sure, but hell looks good on him. And when the tape rolled, he was gold: talking eagerly and untiredly about everything from Johnny Marco’s “classic look” to Sofia Coppola’s un-Hollywood-ness to Elle Fanning’s new favourite bracelet. Guess who bought it? Yep. Don’t pretend you’re not falling.

I have to tell you, and I hope this doesn’t make things awkward, but I dated you for years. [Dorff looks completely nonplussed.] In the first scene of Somewhere, when you get out of your Mustang, you look exactly like my ex-boyfriend. I couldn’t believe it.

“Do I look like him now, or in the movie?”

More in the movie. The way you dress: the old Levi’s and the boots, and the way your hair sticks up.

“That’s funny. Sofia [Coppola] and Stacey [Battat], the wardrobe designer, literally had me try on 150 pairs of jeans, from Japanese denim to Acne to APC. Then I ended up in a pair of old Levi’s.”

That’s always the way it is.

“She just wanted it to be a classic kind of look, like she always assumed one of those movie stars would have. She picked all the T-shirts.“

I like the Black Flag one.

“Yeah, when he’s in the makeup chair, her idea was for me to see myself, all made up to look extremely old, with the Black Flag shirt on. It’s very cool, like an image of Johnny in the future. The whole movie’s told like that, with details and vignette scenes and moments, because it’s obviously not a dialogue-heavy movie.”

There’s hardly any action either. There’s hardly any action in any Sofia Coppola movies, but especially in Somewhere, the plot just drifts.

“The plot comes from getting to know this guy. The core of the movie to me is the father-daughter story. It’s not about Hollywood. And Sofia just doesn’t buy into any–there’s not one cliche in this movie. She just kind of does it her way.”

You never say, or Johnny never says, to his daughter that–

“I love you?”

Yeah.

“I wanted to say it. I wanted to say a lot of things. But Sofia believes that, in life, so much is not said when you want to say it. In [most] movies, everything is verbalized. But in Sofia’s movies, you have to say all those things with your eyes.”

I heard you gave Elle [Fanning] a pearl bracelet at the end of the film. Where’d you get it?

“We were wrapping the movie in Milan, and I went into a fancy boutique there. I didn’t know what to get an 11-year-old. I just saw all these sexy things I would buy for a girlfriend. One of the girls from the camera department came to help me, and in the bottom of one shelf we found this bracelet: just dainty all-natural pearls loosely on a string. She still wears it. Her stylist came up to me and said, I give Elle all this jewellery, but all she wants to wear is your bracelet. She’s got loyalty, I like that. She’s a great girl. She’s just so freaking tall right now. She’s like six feet in heels. I’m like, ‘whoa, Elle, can you slow this down? I need a step stool to take a photo with you.’ She’s like, ‘you’re not that short.'”

She already knows what to say to guys.

“Yeah, exactly.”